If, in transcribing the ISBN, a mistake is made such as a wrong number or a transposition error, there is a good chance that the resulting ISBN will be invalid, indicating the error. Its value is calculated from the other nine digits of the ISBN and provides, as its name implies, a check on the validity of the ISBN. The check digit is the last digit of the ISBN. This may consist of up to six digits.%p The title identifier is also used to pad, if necessary, the length of the ISBN to 10 digits, by having preceding zeroes added to it.%p For the examples given earlier on this page the title identifier is 852663 and 271 respectively: ISBN 0-19-852663 The title identifier identifies the specific edition of the book allocated an ISBN. For information about the administration of the ISBN system, including details of national ISBN agencies, see the administration of the ISBN system page.įor the examples given earlier on this page the publisher identifier is 7 respectively: ISBN 0-19 Publisher identifiers are allocated by the publisher's ISBN agency for the group (the country, geographical area or language area) in which it falls. The publisher identifier signifies the publisher that published the book bearing that ISBN. Group identifiers are allocated by the International ISBN Agency.įor information about the administration of the ISBN system, including details of the International ISBN Agency, see the administration of the ISBN system page.įor the examples given earlier on this page the group identifier is 0 and 1 respectively: ISBN 0. The group identifier identifies a country, geographical area or language area taking part in the ISBN system. With the exception of the last character (the check digit) all characters are numeric between zero and nine.

There are always ten characters in total in the 10-digit ISBN. The fourth section, the check digit, is always one character. In fact, it is possible for the number of characters to vary in the first three sections. Three things to notice are that (a) one book has hyphens to separate parts of the number, while the other has spaces or spaces and a hyphen, and (b) the number of characters in at least the second and third sections varies between the two books, while (c) both books ISBNs have the same number of sections - four. In this book the ISBN appears on the back cover as: ISBN 1 86197 271-7Īnd on the back title page as: ISBN 1 86197 271 7 Its ISBN is 1861972717, but photographs of the book also show its ISBN divided into sections and preceded with the letters 'ISBN'. In this case, the 10-digit ISBN would appear like this: ISBN-10: 0-19-852663-6Īnother book that I have to hand is “In Code”, published in 2001 by Profile Books and written by Sarah Flannery with David Flannery. These photographs show the ISBN like this: ISBN 0-19-852663-6Īs 13-digit ISBNs become introduced, it may be possible to see books bearing both a 10-digit and the the equivalent 13-digit ISBNs. When you look at the ISBN as printed on the book shown in the photographs taken of the back cover above the barcode and from the back of the title page near the front of the book, you can see it is separated into sections by hyphens. Its ISBN, shown as a simple string of 10 digits, is 0198526636. The first example is the book “Taking Chances”, published in 2003 by Oxford University Press and written by John Haigh.

A couple of examples will show these sections. An ISBN can be broken down into sections that have a discrete meaning. From 1 st January 2007 an ISBN is 13 digits in length. Until the end of 2006 an ISBN consisted of 10 digits. Last reviewed and updated on Tueday, August 31, 2021.

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